Sentry gun controller-board upgrade

This open source sentry gun controller board builds on a great concept by getting rid of the Arduino board. The previous version was an Arduino shield, but this upgrade keeps all of the cool features by rolling the necessary parts into one smaller footprint.

The image above doesn’t quite convey the scope of the project. Go take a look at the feature from last year which used the shield version of the controller. That build used a servo-mounted paintball gun in conjunction with a webcam. You can still build the same platform, but use the open-source files to include this board. It has outputs for three servo motors, and can also interface with airsoft or paintball guns which have their own electronic triggers and integrated batteries.

We always like to see the schematic for projects like this one. For your convenience we exported an image from the Eagle package. You can find it, along with the demo video, after the break.

no, their system isn’t better at all. I tracked down this guy because he started spamming our forum with messages like the ones above. Turns out he isn’t doing it himself – he hired a company to do it for him…

Ohh and I know the code used by its commercial competitor because I had seen posts where he asked for help once he managed to get it to work. He will tell you that his code is more advanced and stuff but it’s just BS.

@randomdude, What exactly do you mean by “100% opensource”? A lot of these “open” projects aren’t that open when they don’t include the Bill of Materials. I’m not really singling this project out (because the author may be very open to adding a BOM), but most of these open source and open hardware projects seem to drop the ball when it comes to providing a BOM.

Yea, the pololu controller is technically better than an arduino based controller because it is smaller, can control servo accel and speed (which turns out to be very important for a turret), and is cheaper. I’ve tried both system and found that the sentry project system performs a lot better. I like what the guys at project sentrygun are trying to do but it’s not yet up to my standards yet.

Looks nice, and you can dynamically set the acceleration via TTL commands which would be nice for implementing PID control. I don’t see PID control implemented in the current software, just a smoothing function which just looks like a dampening filter.

anyway it’s not that you need to buy his board or build one yourself at all – you can use arduino instead

it’s a very simple project,
both mechanically and electrically. Why would anyone need a BOM for it ? I don’t think you really spend time to have a closer look at it – if you would have you would know there are very few parts

@randomdude… there is no reason to be an ass. I think a lot of people recognize these open hardware projects are not as OPEN as they claim to be.

I built my own Arduino Pro Mini and spent a considerable amount of time locating the correct components for it because I could not find a BOM. Sure the components are not that difficult to UNDERSTAND.. the schematic is SIMPLE.. however what SIZE are those 0.1uF caps? 0805 or 0603 or 0402?? What 16MHz resonator would be appropriate for this design and what is the exact size used? Every resonator MFG makes them different, there is no standard like resistors and caps. What FET was used and what is the footprint? Should I have to dig into the PCB layout and footprints to figure all of this out?? No, there should be a BOM for it.

Why would I want to just use an Arduino when this thread is talking about a CUSTOM PCB that rolls the Sentry components and connectors onto a PCB with the Arduino base design? I wouldn’t… I want to know what the components are for THIS design so that I can order the PCB cheap, and buy the parts for it and build it myself. Do you build stuff for yourself?? Do I really care if you do???

So in short, stop assuming you know what I did and didn’t do… or what is best for me… and think about my actual question… where is the BOM for this 100% OPEN SOURCE (OPEN HARDWARE) design?